Fair and Equal, Versus the Justice of God

"The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble" (Proverbs 16:4).

In American culture, there is a high value placed on fairness and egalitarianism. Anyone with at least two kids has experienced the protests of, "That isn't fair!" Or, "he got more than I did!" The standard parental response is, "Well, life isn't fair."

I am not saying that there is necessarily anything wrong with either fairness or equality. However, I do object to their being turned into overriding considerations. That is how we get socialism, the assumption that fairness requires, not equal rights, but equal outcomes. If two people, one hard-working and the other lazy, are paid the same, is that fair and equal? Certainly. However, is it just? I would say "no." If a rich man dies, and leaves his children well-provided, while another man, a poor one, dies and leaves his children destitute, is that fair and equal? Obviously not. Is it just? In this case, I would say "yes." Would it be fair and equal to deprive the rich man's children of their inheritance, in order to make to everyone's outcome the same? Ah, there is the crux of the matter!

The question is this: If one person benefits from a thing that another person does not have, is that fair and equal? Think about Christmas. If your parents could afford to give you a ten-speed bike, but the parents down the street can only afford to give their kids a new pair of gloves, what do we do? Take away your bike?

This is the difference between justice and fairness in the examples I have described: the ability of some parents to give more is nowhere by depriving other parents of the same ability (I am not talking about criminals, of course). That is, the children who have received less in my examples would have received what they did, no matter what had happened to the richer children.

The same principle applies to the purposes of God. When the Scriptures are read that tell us that God has determined His use for every person who has existed or ever will, is it fair that the purpose is positive for some, but negative for others? "Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?" (Romans 9:21). But asking that question is to ignore that we exist only because He has given us existence. And, as Paul implies, it is the right of the creator to create things according to his own purposes, not according to the desires of those things.

People, including professing Christians, hate that truth! they snarl and proclaim their devotion to fairness and equality, while sweeping aside the proper issue of justice. If we had not been created to serve the purposes of God, then we would have had no existence at all! therefore, the purposes of God do not deprive us of anything that we would otherwise have had. Therefore, "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have You made me like this?'" (Romans 9:20).

What Goes Around Comes Around: Self-Destruction Through the Self-Deception of Unbelief

God, through the Apostle Paul, tells us, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth" (Romans 1:18). That is, God has so revealed Himself in His creation (see Psalm 19:1-4) and in the nature of man that every man knows Him and our accountability to Him. However, the unbeliever, in order to maintain his myth of independence, suppresses his knowledge of God.

Since he is acting against his own knowledge, the unbeliever must resort to irrationality, because logic doesn't permit the holding of contrary "truths." That pesky Law of Non-Contradiction pops up. Therefore, the unbeliever must deceive himself, as well as others, in order to avoid the rational contradictions in his worldview.

"All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes,
     but the Lord weighs the spirit...
There is a way that seems right to a man, 
    but its end is the way to death." 
-Proverbs 16:2, 25

One of the main ways that self-deception occurs is by stealing from the biblical worldview, in order to fill the gaps that unbelief cannot supply. A godless universe cannot provide a foundation for morality, for example, but no person can function in society without a sense of right and wrong. Therefore, the mind of the unbeliever, in order to satisfy his God-given conscience, "invents," he believes, a system of morality, though, in actuality, he has merely expressed the law written in his heart (Romans 2:15).

That is why what seems right to him actually leads to death, that is, the spiritual consequences of God's wrath at his rebellion. His conscience reveals what his heart really knows, that God is, and that he is accountable to Him. Yet, in his profession, he denies those truths, and, instead, curses God and His Word. His self-deception has thereby, not relieved him of that accountability, but rather brought him under the consequences of it. 

God's Holy Discrimination and Bearing False Witness in Evangelism

"The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
     but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to Him.  
The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord,
     but He loves Him who pursues righteousness... 
The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord,
     but gracious words are pure... 
The Lord is far from the wicked,    
     but He hears the prayer of the righteous."
- Proverbs 15:8-9, 26, 29 

We often hear well-meaning Christians wax passionate about God's love for everybody. They like to add qualifiers, such as "equally" or "unconditionally." In evangelism, they tell even the rankest unbeliever, "Jesus loves you." However, not only are those proclamations unbiblical, but they are destructive.

Think about this: If you convince an unbeliever that God loves him as he is, then why should he repent of his unbelief? Why should he repent of his wicked lifestyle? After all, you have just devoted your passion to telling him that God loves him unconditionally! Why change? 

Yet, the Scriptures, to the contrary, tell us that even the religious performances of the unbeliever are an abomination (see also I Corinthians 11:27). The prayers of the unbeliever are unacceptable. His lifestyle is abominable. His thoughts are a wicked abomination. God is not contemplating love for the unbeliever, but is, rather, far from him (Isaiah 59:2). Those are descriptions of an enemy, not someone whom God loves.

Evangelism can never be the telling of an unbeliever that God loves him. That would be bearing false witness (Exodus 20:16, Deuteronomy 5:20). Rather, he must be warned that God is his enemy, and that His wrath is upon him: "Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed" (Romans 2:5). He must be warned to flee to Jesus for refuge from that wrath, not encouraged to a false security in a supposed love of God for everyone. 

Atheism and Self-Imposed Blindness

There are certain standard challenges that come from opponents of biblical Christianity, such as atheists.

One of those challenges is the claim of the supposed immorality of God in the destruction of the Canaanites at His command by the conquering Israelites, after their exodus from Egypt. And let me say that it is true that He commanded that, though Israel was less than thorough in obeying His command.

Would that action be immoral if committed by men without God's command? I would certainly say so. Apart from self-defense, just war, and a few cases of criminal justice, it is always immoral for any human being to kill another. I can say that because God has said it, one of the big Ten: "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13).

Does that apply here? No, it doesn't. Why? Because of the exceptions that I carefully enumerated. In particular, criminal justice.

Even when a man thinks he has justification to kill another, he is one sinner contemplating vengeance against another. And that is the key error in the logic of the atheist. By not accepting the word of God, he does not understand the sinfulness of men. He considers men to be innocent by default. It is as if a man were judging a dark gray spot as white, because he is viewing it against a black background.

However, the biblical perspective is that of a God of perfect holiness examining sinful men. He is judging men, not against each other, but against Himself, black spots against a background of snow white. By that standard every human being is deserving of capital punishment. Therefore, His justice is perfect in the destruction of the wicked Canaanites. It is His mercy, not justice, that we see in His refraining from such destruction for all men, including those Israelites. The atheist focuses on a false claim of injustice, while closing his eyes to the mercy.

However, even with those Canaanites, God showed a mercy that no atheist ever notices. In spite of their particular evil, such as the practice of human sacrifice, even of their own children, God expresses mercy to them, in giving them an extra four-hundred years to repent (Genesis 15:16). No human court has ever granted that level of leniency!

In addition to the repetition of the same questions, another thing that I have noticed is that the answer never matters. Not only do the same questions get asked over and over, but the same answers are given, over and over. That indicates to me that they are getting the questions from each other, not from their own investigations. And, since each of those challenges has been answered, their repetition indicates to me that it isn't the answer that is important, but rather maintaining the challenge in their own minds. That is, I believe that the atheist holds on  to that question for protection, a protection not offered by the answer. Protection from what? From knowledge.

The Bible says, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse" (Romans 1:18-20). The atheist claims not to believe that there is a God, but that is a deception - not a deception to the person to whom he makes the claim, but rather a deception to himself. Everyone knows that there is a God and that we are accountable to Him. The atheist knows that, too, but he hates that knowledge. The atheist wants to believe that he is god over his own life, so he suppresses the knowledge that his desire is a delusion. Then when his challenges are answered, his self-deception is endangered. Therefore, he is forced to ignore the answers. Unbelief is never a matter of reason, but rather only of self-deception.

That is why conversion can only happen by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. The blinders, put in place by the unbeliever himself, must be ripped away, just as happened in the conversion of Paul (Acts 9:18).

The Omniscience of God

"The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good" (Proverbs 15:3).

This verse addresses so many common errors in our day.

The worst is also the most common. As I have written elsewhere, Americans may be overwhelmingly professing Christians, but that profession is false. The true religion of most Americans in Deism. We talk about God, even about Jesus, but that profession has no impact on our lives. We live as if we are atheists, treating God as a doddering grandfather who is restricted to heaven and church. However, as Solomon wrote in this proverb, God is under no such restriction. He is omnipresent, and aware of every act we perform or thought that passes through our hearts. And He judges us accordingly.

The reverse side of that implicit Deism is the Open Theists, who claim that God is learning as contingent events occur. That is, that He cannot have exhaustive knowledge of events because those events depend on the supposedly-autonomous decisions of men or chance. Again, that doctrine is refuted, because God has exactly what the Open Theists deny, i. e., exhaustive knowledge.

It refutes the pseudo-Christian sects which try to downgrade the deity of God by denying His omniscience. Jehovah's Witnesses explicitly deny that God is omniscient, for some of the same reasons as the Open Theists. An all-knowing God must be an all-determining God, and the Watchtower cannot accept such a concept. Mormons have demoted God to a mere exalted man, which necessarily precludes attributes that are different in kind from those of humans, such as omniscience.

It also refutes the idea that the triune biblical God of the Bible is the God only of Christians, but has no claim or relevance to those who sincerely follow other religions. Jehovah claims universal jurisdiction. Therefore, followers of other religions are not sincere but misguided; they are, instead, rebels against their proper creator and ruler, and He knows who each one is.

The Triune God: The Necessary Foundation for Life

For most people reading this, there would a be a common experience in school of learning Euclidean geometry as part of our mathematical education. Part of that study would have been a group of axioms, i. e., principles which are unprovable, but are essential for building the rest of our geometrical system. Those axioms are then used to build and prove everything else.

All of life works the same way. Simply in order to live, we have to make certain unprovable assumptions, such as that we exist, that the things we sense in the world around us are really there, etc. Without those assumptions, everything degenerates into irrationality, incomprehensibility, and futility. We would not be able to function as thinking creatures.

The Bible assumes one principle as fundamental to all others, such that without it, again, we degenerate into irrationality, incomprehensibility, and futility: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). It furthermore condemns as a fool anyone who rejects that fundamental axiom: "How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord" (Proverbs 1:22, 29). Any worldview built on any foundation other than the triune God of the Bible is built on a false basis, and must, therefore, collapse.

Notice that this is something that the writers of the Bible didn't consider to necessitate proof. It was something so self-evident that to deny it is considered to be foolish. Just as a mathematician who denies the axioms of geometry, the man who denies the most fundamental principle of the real world will necessarily end up in irrationality, incomprehensibility, and futility. Is this not what we see happening in our modern world? As Westerners have replaced our Christian heritage with humanism and mysticism, we have seen only growing social breakdown, such as violence and suicide. We have demonstrated the truth of Solomon's assertions in Proverbs. Jesus, too, well described this form of spiritual breakdown: "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand" (Matthew 7:26). And the sand is being washed away.

One God and One Salvation, Contra Dispensationalism

One of the worst doctrines found in classical dispensationalism is that history is divided into periods when believers were saved in different ways. For example, the Jews were supposedly saved by obeying the Law, while Christians live in a different dispensation, in which we are saved by grace. While most self-described dispensationalists now repudiate that concept, it has crept into a more-general evangelical audience. You will often run into people who claim that Old Testament salvation was by law, but the New testament is grace.

That assertion is false.

On one hand, it is true that the Bible says, "You shall therefore keep My statutes and My rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD" (Leviticus 18:5). On the other hand - and no one seems to notice this - it is never stated that any person has achieved eternal life in that way! Even David, the man after God's own heart (I Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22) is described as a sinner (Psalm 51), and never as one saved by his law obedience.

Why is that? Because, as David himself says, every man, woman, or child since the fall of Adam (excluding Jesus) is born a sinner, and any sin, even just one, makes that man, woman, or child a rebel under the Law (James 2:10). So, what about Leviticus 18:5? It is God's word, and, therefore, necessarily true. However, it is just hypothetical. If there were a man who was 100% consistent with the Law in thought and action, from his conception forward, then that man could claim eternal life as his due. However, besides Jesus, there has not been, nor could ever be, such a man.

Has the Law then deceived us with an impossible dream? Not at all. Rather, the Law should lead us to despair of that way of salvation. And, indeed, that same Law points us to the only alternative: "I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break My covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord" (Leviticus 26:44-45). In that same Law, God promises the salvation of His people, not on the basis of Law, but on the basis of His covenant to be gracious to His chosen people! 

Therefore, whenever anyone claims that there are two (or more) methods of salvation in the Bible, or that Jews are saved in a different way from Gentiles, then he is parroting something which he has been taught, because there is no such dichotomy in Scripture.

Evidence and the Claims of the Watchtower

"If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it" (John 14:14).

These are the words of Jesus, explicitly telling us that we can pray to Him, expressing our needs and desires, and looking to Him to provide them. There can hardly be a stronger claim to deity and equality with the Father.

Yet, some people will come up with the most-imaginative twists to avoid what Jesus says.

I brought up this verse in a forum with Jehovah's Witnesses. I mentioned it because they teach that prayers can only be made to "Jehovah God." I asked them to explain how they can maintain their claim in the face of these words of Jesus.

The only reply I got claimed that "me" is not in the original text. And, if you look only at the King James Version, you might get that impression. However, I showed him the page in the Kingdom Interlinear Bible (the Watchtower's own production of an interlinear Greek/Hebrew/English version), which shows the "me" in the Greek text. That is, the Watchtower's own edition of the Greek New Testament showed "me" in the text. That person immediately disappeared from the conversation.

So, this is my challenge to Jehovah's Witnesses: if your organization makes claims which are so easily refuted by their own literature, then who do you continue to follow that organization?

Transubstantiation and Eating Blood

Before I start, I wanted to mention that this is my 600th post!

In the Old Testament, God makes clear the point that He didn't want His people to consume blood.

It started when men first started eating meat, after the Flood: "You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood" (Genesis 9:4). Thus, it wasn't part of the Mosaic laws of ceremonial cleanness.

It did, however, continue under the Mosaic ceremonies: "If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people" (Leviticus 17:10). And, "Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh" (Deuteronomy 12:23).

It is also found in the New Testament: "You [shall] abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well" (Acts 15:29).

I bring this up because of the Catholic doctrine of the eucharist, according to which Rome claims that the wine and bread of communion literally become the blood and flesh of Jesus. Their official statement on the matter comes form the Council of Trent: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation" (CCC 1376). 

Do you see the conflict? While the scriptures repeatedly condemn consuming blood, the Church of Rome claims that her members do literally that in the eucharist! That shows, first, that Rome's eucharist, in spite of the name, is no act of thanksgiving, but is, instead, a rite of superstition; and second, that the words of Jesus, "This is My blood," cannot be taken literally.

Why did God forbid the consuming of blood? Because it is life. The animal cannot live if it loses its blood. And, more importantly, it is the blood of Christ that is ultimate life, because it alone is the basis of eternal life. While Rome is correct in pointing to the blood of Jesus for salvation (John 6:54), she is wrong in how it is applied. There is no salvation in ceremonies. It is only by faith that the benefits of Christ's blood are received: "We are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith" (Romans 3:24-25, see also Ephesians 2:13, Hebrews 9:14, and I Peter 1:19). While talking about the blood of Christ, Rome makes her priests the conduits of salvation, in place of faith. that is one of the reasons that the Catholic eucharist is a blasphemy, in which no true Christian should participate.